It is important, as we go on to deal with understanding the deadlock on discussions about design theory, to understand how many evolutionary materialists and fellow travellers address evidence and reasoning.
For example, in recent weeks, here at UD, we have had to address how not even self-evident first principles of reason are regarded by many objectors to design thought.
Similarly, once record (or testimony) does not fit the preferred narrative, it is going to be dismissed as inadequate and/or delusional or as suspected of fakery. In effect, after all, our senses and perceptions are not utterly reliable, so if something does not fit the lab coat clad evolutionary materialist narrative, something must be wrong.
The case of Jesus of Nazareth is emblematic, as it is frequently projected that there is insufficient evidence to ground the bare existence of such a figure.
For instance, we can find the dean of the New Atheists, Dr Richard Dawkins (late of Oxford University) in an interview with the September 2012 Playboy magazine (HT: UD News):
DAWKINS: The evidence [Jesus] existed is surprisingly shaky. The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It’s almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren’t that interested in whether Jesus was real. Even if he’s fictional, whoever wrote his lines was ahead of his time in terms of moral philosophy.PLAYBOY: You’ve read the Bible.DAWKINS: I haven’t read it all, but my knowledge of the Bible is a lot better than most fundamentalist Christians’.
Of course, this confident manner, breezy and contemptuous dismissal is the very opposite to what Paul wrote c. 55 AD, to the Corinthians regarding the core facts of the gospel transmitted to him through the official testimony communicated by Peter, James, John and other leading witnesses in Jerusalem, c. 35 – 38 AD. Testimony and record sealed in the blood of the martyrs.
In this context, it is worth the while to first pause and view Strobel’s 101 level summary presentation on The Case for Christ, as a first level response to the arguments that the world’s most famous carpenter and itinerant preacher never existed, or the like skeptical arguments:
[vimeo 17960119]
This is of course just a preliminary.
Likewise, dismissive skeptics would be well advised to pause and ponder Morison’s challenge in his famous, Who Moved the Stone, before they trash their own credibility as reasonable and responsible thinkers:
[N]ow the peculiar thing . . . is that not only did [belief in Jesus’ resurrection as in part testified to by the empty tomb] spread to every member of the Party of Jesus of whom we have any trace, but they brought it to Jerusalem and carried it with inconceivable audacity into the most keenly intellectual centre of Judaea . . . and in the face of every impediment which a brilliant and highly organised camarilla could devise. And they won. Within twenty years the claim of these Galilean peasants had disrupted the Jewish Church and impressed itself upon every town on the Eastern littoral of the Mediterranean from Caesarea to Troas. In less than fifty years it had began to threaten the peace of the Roman Empire . . . .
Why did it win? . . . .
We have to account not only for the enthusiasm of its friends, but for the paralysis of its enemies and for the ever growing stream of new converts . . . When we remember what certain highly placed personages would almost certainly have given to have strangled this movement at its birth but could not – how one desperate expedient after another was adopted to silence the apostles, until that veritable bow of Ulysses, the Great Persecution, was tried and broke in pieces in their hands [the chief persecutor became the leading C1 Missionary/Apostle!] – we begin to realise that behind all these subterfuges and makeshifts there must have been a silent, unanswerable fact. [Who Moved the Stone, (Faber, 1971; nb. orig. pub. 1930), pp. 114 – 115.]
In this context, we should ponder Simon Greenleaf (a founding figure for the modern theory of evidence) on what he termed the error of the skeptic, viz., what I have descriptively labelled selective hyperskepticism, in his Testimony of the Evangelists:
. . . the subject of inquiry [i.e. evidence relating to the credibility of the New Testament accounts] is a matter of fact, and not of abstract mathematical proof. The latter alone is susceptible of that high degree of proof, usually termed demonstration, which excludes the possibility of error . . . In the ordinary affairs of life we do not require nor expect [mathematically/logically] demonstrative evidence, because it is inconsistent with the nature of matters of fact, and to insist on its production would be unreasonable and absurd . . . The error of the skeptic [–> what I have descriptively termed selective hyperskepticism] consists in pretending or supposing that there is a difference in the nature of things to be proved; and in demanding demonstrative evidence concerning things which are not susceptible of any other than moral evidence alone, and of which the utmost that can be said is, that there is no reasonable doubt about their truth . . . .
Greenleaf went on to provide some tested, glorified common sense, long since court case tested rules of evidence, as summarised in the same Testimony of the Evangelists; on the strength of his magisterial Treatise on Evidence:
1] THE ANCIENT DOCUMENTS RULE: Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forgery, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise. [p.16.]
3] On Inquiries and Reports: If [a report] were “the result of inquiries, made under competent public authority, concerning matters in which the public are concerned” it would . . . be legally admissible . . . To entitle such results, however, to our full confidence, it is not necessary that they be obtained under a legal commission; it is sufficient if the inquiry is gravely undertaken and pursued, by a person of competent intelligence, sagacity and integrity. The request of a person in authority, or a desire to serve the public, are, to all moral intents, as sufficient a motive as a legal commission. [p. 25. Cf here especially the archaeologically well supported, historical backbone of the NT, Luke-Acts, given Luke’s famous preface and thesis statement at the beginning of Luke Ch 1: “1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.“]
4] Probability of Truthfulness: In trials of fact, by oral testimony, the proper inquiry is not whether it is possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there is a sufficient probability that it is true. [p. 28.]
5] Criteria of Proof: A proposition of fact is proved, when its truth is established by competent and satisfactory evidence. By competent evidence is meant such as the nature of the thing to be proved requires; and by satisfactory evidence is meant that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind [in British usage, the man in the Clapham Bus Stop], beyond any reasonable doubt. [pp. 28 – 9.]
6] Credibility of Witnesses: In the absence of circumstances which generate suspicion, every witness is to be presumed credible, until the contrary is shown; the burden of impeaching his credibility lying on the objector. [p. 29]
7] Credit due to testimony: The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon, firstly, their honesty; secondly, their ability; thirdly, their number and the consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the conformity of their testimony with experience; and fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony with collateral circumstances. [p.31.]
8] Ability of a Witness to speak truth: the ability of a witness to speak the truth depends on the opportunities which he has had for observing the facts, the accuracy of his powers of discerning, and the faithfulness of his memory in retaining the facts, once observed and known . . . It is always to be presumed that men are honest, and of sound mind, and of the average and ordinary degree of intelligence . . . Whenever an objection is raised in opposition to ordinary presumptions of law, or to the ordinary experience of mankind, the burden of proof is devolved on the objector. [pp. 33 – 4.]
9] Internal coherence and external corroboration: Every event which actually transpires has its appropriate relation and place in the vast complication of circumstances, of which the affairs of men consist; it owes its origin to the events which have preceded it, it is intimately connected with all others which occur at the same time and place, and often with those of remote regions, and in its turn gives birth to numberless others which succeed. In all this almost inconceivable contexture, and seeming discord, there is perfect harmony; and while the fact, which really happened, tallies exactly with every other contemporaneous incident, related to it in the remotest degree, it is not possible for the wit of man to invent a story, which, if closely compared with the actual occurrences of the same time and place, may not be shown to be false. [p. 39.]
10] Marks of false vs true testimony: a false witness will not willingly detail any circumstances in which his testimony will be open to contradiction, nor multiply them where there is a danger of his being detected by a comparison of them with other accounts, equally circumstantial . . . Therefore, it is, that variety and minuteness of detail are usually regarded as certain test[s] of sincerity, if the story, in the circumstances related, is of a nature capable of easy refutation, if it were false . . . . [False witnesses] are often copious and even profuse in their statements, as far as these may have been previously fabricated, and in relation to the principal matter; but beyond this, all will be reserved and meagre, from fear of detection . . . in the testimony of the true witness there is a visible and striking naturalness of manner, and an unaffected readiness and copiousness in the detail of circumstances, as well in one part of the narrative as another, and evidently without the least regard to the facility or difficulty of verification or detection . . . the increased number of witnesses to circumstances, and the increased number of circumstances themselves, all tend to increase the probability of detection if the witnesses are false . . . Thus the force of circumstantial evidence is found to depend on the number of particulars involved in the narrative; the difficulty of fabricating them all, if false, and the great facility of detection; the nature of the circumstances to be compared, and from which the dates and other facts to are be collected; the intricacy of the comparison; the number of intermediate steps in the process of deduction; and the circuity of the investigation. The more largely the narrative partake[s] of these characteristics, the further it will be found removed from all suspicion of contrivance or design, and the more profoundly the mind will rest in the conviction of its truth. [pp. 39 – 40.]
12] The degree of coherence expected of true witnesses: substantial truth, under circumstantial variety. There is enough of discrepancy to show that there could have been no previous concert among them, and at the same time such substantial agreement as to show that they all were independent narrators of the same great transaction, as the events actually occurred. [p.34. All cites from The Testimony of the Evangelists (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Classics, 1995). The First Easter’s timeline gives a good case in point, given the focal issue here. You may find it profitable to also examine Edwin Yamauchi’s review and W L Craig’s remarks on the resurrection vs the current version of the hallucination hypothesis. Craig’s critical assessment of the Jesus Seminar is also well worth the time to read it.]
In this context, Habermas’ UCSB lecture on the minimal facts is well worth viewing:
[youtube ay_Db4RwZ_M]
Also, Paul Maier on the historicity of Jesus vs fashionable skeptical narratives:
[youtube XAN3kQHTKWI]
It is further worth a pause to note Paul Barnett’s summary of the record of early non-Christian sources on the basic facts of the early Christian movement and particularly the existence of Jesus as an historical figure:
On the basis of . . . non-Christian sources [i.e. Tacitus (Annals, on the fire in Rome, AD 64; written ~ AD 115), Rabbi Eliezer (~ 90’s AD; cited J. Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1929), p. 34), Pliny (Letters to Trajan from Bithynia, ~ AD 112), Josephus (Antiquities, ~ 90’s)] it is possible to draw the following conclusions:
- Jesus Christ was executed (by crucifixion?) in Judaea during the period where Tiberius was Emperor (AD 14 – 37) and Pontius Pilate was Governor (AD 26 – 36). [Tacitus]
- The movement spread from Judaea to Rome. [Tacitus]
- Jesus claimed to be God and that he would depart and return. [Eliezer]
- His followers worshipped him as (a) god. [Pliny]
- He was called “the Christ.” [Josephus]
- His followers were called “Christians.” [Tacitus, Pliny]
- They were numerous in Bithynia and Rome [Tacitus, Pliny]
- It was a world-wide movement. [Eliezer]
- His brother was James. [Josephus]
[Is the New Testament History? (London, Hodder, 1987), pp. 30 – 31. Cf. McDowell & Wilson, He Walked Among Us (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1993) for more details; free for download here.]
A video presentation on such extra-bliblical support:
[youtube 4bLlpiWh9-k]
Likewise, we can trace and summarise the chain of custody of the NT accounts, thanks to McDowell and Wilson:
Cumulatively, the weight of textual evidence for the NT is overwhelming relative to the rest of classical literature, and grounds the authenticity of the text beyond reasonable dispute. The credibility of the basic narrative rests on the patent fact that it is eyewitness lifetime record, maintained in many cases at the price of peacefully surrendering one’s life to judicial murder or mob lynching rather than deny solemn, sacred trust of truth. A testimony that within a generation shook the foundations of Rome and drew the ire of the demonically mad emperor Nero, as the Christian movement grew and became unstoppable. All, backed up by a pattern of archaeological-historical confirmation and support summed up by Craig Evans in his 2004 Benthal public lecture:
The story told in the New Testament Gospels—in contrast to the greatly embellished versions found in the Gospel of Peter and other writings— smacks of verisimilitude. The women went to the tomb to mourn privately and to perform duties fully in step with Jewish burial customs. They expected to find the body of Jesus; ideas of resurrection were the last thing on their minds. The careful attention given the temporary tomb is exactly what we should expect. Pious fiction—like that seen in the Gospel of Peter— would emphasize other things. Archaeology can neither prove nor disprove the resurrection, but it can and has shed important light on the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death, burial, and missing corpse . . . .
Research in the historical Jesus has taken several positive steps in recent years. Archaeology, remarkable literary discoveries, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and progress in reassessing the social, economic, and political setting of first-century Palestine have been major factors. Notwithstanding the eccentricities and skepticism of the Jesus Seminar, the persistent trend in recent years is to see the Gospels as essentially reliable, especially when properly understood, and to view the historical Jesus in terms much closer to Christianity’s traditional understanding, i.e., as proclaimer of God’s rule, as understanding himself as the Lord’s anointed, and, indeed, as God’s own son, destined to rule Israel. But this does not mean that the historical Jesus that has begun to emerge in recent years is simply a throwback to the traditional portrait. The picture of Jesus that has emerged is more finely nuanced, more obviously Jewish, and in some ways more unpredictable than ever. The last word on the subject has not been written and probably never will be. Ongoing discovery and further investigation will likely force us to make further revisions as we read and read again the old Gospel stories and try to come to grips with the life of this remarkable Galilean Jew.
In this context, it is finally worth doing some summing up on the minimal facts:
The minimal facts method only uses sources which are multiply attested, and agreed to by a majority of scholars (ranging from atheist to conservative). This requires that they have one or more of the following criteria which are relevant to textual criticism:
- Multiple sources – If two or more sources attest to the same fact, it is more likely authentic
- Enemy attestation – If the writers enemies corroborate a given fact, it is more likely authentic
- Principle of embarrassment – If the text embarrasses the writer, it is more likely authentic
- Eyewitness testimony – First hand accounts are to be prefered
- Early testimony – an early account is more likely accurate than a later one
Having first established the well attested facts, the approach then argues that the best explanation of these agreed to facts is the resurrection of Jesus Christ . . . . [Source: “Minimal facts” From Apologetics Wiki. Full article: here. (Courtesy, Wayback Machine.)]
Why is that so?
The easiest answer is to simply list the facts that meet the above criteria and are accepted by a majority to an overwhelming majority of recent and current scholarship after centuries of intense debate:
[THE TWELVE “MINIMAL FACTS”]
1. Jesus died by crucifixion [–> which implies his historicity!].
2. He was buried.
3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope.
4. The tomb was empty (the most contested).
5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus (the most important proof). [–> Note, the fact-finding is a cautious statement as to what the disciples believed based on their individual and collective experiences; this is not a miracle claim]
6. The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers.
7. The resurrection was the central message.
8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem. [–> dating to the 30’s AD, per the consensus on the source and timing of the recorded (c. AD 55) creedal summary with identified lead witnesses found in 1 Cor 15:1 – 11]
9. The Church was born and grew.
10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship.
11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus (James was a family skeptic).
12. Paul was converted to the faith (Paul was an outsider skeptic).
[Cf. Habermas’ paper here and a broader more popular discussion here. NT Wright’s papers here and here give a rich and deep background analysis. Here is a video of a pastoral presentation of a subset of the facts. Habermas presents the case as videos here and here, in two parts. Here is a video of a debate he had with Antony Flew.]
The list of facts is in some respects fairly obvious.
That a Messiah candidate was captured, tried and crucified — as Gamaliel hinted at — was effectively the death-knell for most such movements in Israel in the era of Roman control; to have to report such a fate was normally embarrassing and discrediting to the extreme in a shame-honour culture. The Jews of C1 Judaea wanted a victorious Greater David to defeat the Romans and usher in the day of ultimate triumph for Israel, not a crucified suffering servant. In the cases where a movement continued, the near relatives took up the mantle. That is facts 1 – 3 right there. Facts 10 – 12 are notorious. While some (it looks like about 25% of the survey of scholarship, from what I have seen) reject no 4, in fact it is hard to see a message about a resurrection in C1 that did not imply that the body was living again, as Wright discusses here. Facts 5 – 9 are again, pretty clearly grounded.
So, the challenge is to explain this cluster or important subsets of it, without begging questions and without selective hyperskepticism. The old Deist objections (though sometimes renewed today) have deservedly fallen by the wayside. [Also, cf. ten video shorts on popular myths here.]
We may briefly compare:
|
“Theory”
|
Match to four major credible facts regarding Jesus of Nazareth & his Passion
|
Overall score/20
|
|||
|
Died by crucifixion
(under Pontius Pilate) at
Jerusalem c 30 AD |
Was buried, tomb was found empty
|
Appeared to multiple disciples,
many of whom proclaimed
& suffered for their
faith
|
Appeared to key
objectors who then became church leaders: James & Paul |
||
| Bodily Resurrection |
5
|
5
|
5
|
5
|
20
|
| Visions/ hallucinations |
5
|
2
|
2
|
1
|
10
|
| Swoon/recovery |
1
|
3
|
2
|
2
|
8
|
| Wrong tomb |
5
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
8
|
| Stolen body/fraud |
5
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
9
|
| Quran 4:155 -6: “They did not slay him, neither crucified him.” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| “Jesus never existed” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| “Christianity as we know it was cooked up by Constantine and others at Nicea, who censored/ distorted the original record” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| “What we have today is ‘Paulianity,’ not the original teachings of Jesus and his disciples” | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Christianity — including the resurrection — is a gradually emerging legend based on a real figure |
5
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
8
|
| Complete legend/pagan copycat (Greek, Persian, Egyptian, etc) |
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
4
|
(I have given my scores above, based on reasoning that should be fairly obvious. As an exercise you may want to come up with your own scores on a 5 – 1 scale: 5 = v. good/ 4 = good/ 3 = fair/ 2 = poor/ 1 = v. poor, with explanations. Try out blends of the common skeptical theories to see how they would fare.)
Laying a priori anti-supernaturalism aside as a patent case of worldview level question-begging closed mindedness, the above table shows that there are two serious candidates today, the resurrection as historically understood, or some version of a collective vision/hallucination that led to a sincere (but plainly mistaken) movement.
The latter of course runs into the problem that such collective visions are not psychologically plausible as the cultural expectations of a resurrection would have been of a general one in the context of the obvious military triumph of Israel. Nor, does it explain the apparently missing body. Moreover, we know separately, that the culturally accepted alternative would have been individual prophetic visions of the exalted that on being shared would comfort the grieving that the departed rested with God. So, an ahead of time individual breakthrough resurrection — even, one that may be accompanied by some straws in the wind of what is to come in fulness at the end — is not part of the mental furniture of expectations in C1 Judaism. Where, hallucinations and culturally induced visions are going to be rooted in such pre-existing mental “furniture.”
Where, also — tellingly — the women who bought spices and went to the tomb that morning plainly expected to find it occupied by a dead prophet, one unjustly judicially murdered as so many others had been. (And if you doubt the account that reports how these women became the first to discover the tomb and to see the risen Messiah, consider how dismissive C1 Jews were to the testimony of “hysterical” — that very word in English is rooted in the Greek for womb, hustera (reflecting a very old prejudice . . . ) — women. Such an embarrassing point would only be admitted if the reporter was seeking to tell the full truth as best as he could, regardless of how poorly it would come across to his audience; a C1 audience, not a C21 one.)
The Easter event cuts across all reasonable cultural expectations, and obviously forced a much closer — transforming — look at messianic prophetic passages such as Isa 52 – 53 which plainly led to an aha moment.
Notwithstanding, I can understand how someone can come to a conclusion that the famous carpenter from Nazareth turned itinerant preacher ran into troubles with local and colonial authorities and paid with his life. Then, maybe someone is willing to argue that (despite the problems) some of the followers had visions that convinced them that he was risen from death and against all odds stood in the teeth of concerted powers to the point where at length after a bloody trail of woe, persecution and peaceful martyrdom, the Christian faith prevailed.
But the sort of dismissiveness about the bare historicity of the carpenter from Galilee — itself BTW, a major point of admitting an embarrassing fact that in those days was enough to make many inclined to dismiss — does not come across as reasonably warranted by evidence.
Frankly, it comes across as smacking of ideological desperation to lock out of consideration a major but unwelcome worldview alternative, ethical theism in the Judaeo Christian tradition.
And, in that context, the matter sheds a telling light on the attitudes and agendas that seem to lurk in the background of debates over things like the design inference.
In short, I am appealing for a less polarised, less intransigently hyperskeptical approach to evidence and warrant. And, not just for the design issue. I frankly fear that the locked-in agenda approach is a big part of a march of folly now in progress at all sorts of levels across our civilisation. A civilisation that, to me, seems to be on a collision course with reality — and which is inclined to forget that those who despise the lessons of history bought with blood and tears doom themselves to pay much the same price yet again.
Can we not find a better way? Before it is too late? END